http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/4043727/Too-much-thinking-can-make-you-fat.html

Researchers found the stress of thinking caused overeating with heavy thinkers seeking out more calories.

The research team, supervised by Dr Angelo Tremblay, measured the spontaneous food intake of 14 students after each of three tasks.

The first was relaxing in a sitting position, the second reading and summarizing a text, and finally completing a series of memory, attention, and vigilance tests on the computer.

After 45 minutes at each activity, participants were invited to eat as much as they wanted from a buffet.

The researchers had already discovered that each session of intellectual work requires only three calories more than the rest period.

However, despite the low energy cost of mental work, the students spontaneously consumed 203 more calories after summarizing a text and 253 more calories after the computer tests.

This represents a 23.6 per cent and 29.4 per cent increase, respectively, compared with the rest period.

Blood samples taken before, during, and after each session revealed that intellectual work causes much bigger fluctuations in glucose and insulin levels than rest periods.

Jean-Philippe Chaput, the study's main author, said: "These fluctuations may be caused by the stress of intellectual work, or also reflect a biological adaptation during glucose combustion."

The body could be reacting to these fluctuations by spurring food intake in order to restore its glucose balance, the only fuel used by the brain.

Mr Chaput added: "Caloric overcompensation following intellectual work, combined with the fact we are less physically active when doing intellectual tasks, could contribute to the obesity epidemic currently observed in industrialised countries.

"This is a factor that should not be ignored, considering that more and more people hold jobs of an intellectual nature."

The results of the study, carried out at Universite Laval in Quebec, Canada, are published in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine.

The moral of the story is to get out, get regular exercise at an appropriate level, eat sensibly and whetever you do...

...don't spend every day thinking about it - Just do it.

tallowood wrote on Jan 27^th, 2009 at 10:02pm:


?

I swim and pick up fish at the same time  

The CO2 you produce effectively came from the atmosphere very recently.

Quote:


Are you making this up as you go along?

Your statement falls down on basic logic, well before you get to physiology.

It's not obvious? Maybe what you meant to say is different from what you actually said.